Is the environmental movement too fixated on terrorizing the public with apocalyptic scenarios? It’s a question one might hear from apologists for Big Oil and other political ostriches who will deny that human influence on climate change is a clear and present danger until Lower Manhattan is under water. On the other hand, it’s likely that some potential supporters of green political and lifestyle efforts are scared off by those who think describe environmental doomsdays in endless detail is the best and only means of mobilizing the masses.The record of feature films that focus on portraying such catastrophes is a mixed bag. An Inconvenient Truth clearly struck a chord with a fairly broad audience (while ultimately offering ways to minimize the coming dangers), while the big-budget fictional disaster film The Day After Tomorrow seems just a few years after its release to be more lurid than prophetic.
The new Pixar animated feature Wall-E takes a different yet in some ways wiser approach to revealing its version of environmental degradation. By providing a more gentle and at times humorous perspective on a world ravaged by pollution and emphasizing the human dimensions of its storytelling, Wall-E may win over new converts to the green movement by touching their hearts.
(A quick sidebar to those who have avoided seeing any of Pixar’s nine films because you believe animation is only for children: These are among the most intelligent, emotionally satisfying movies of the past 15 years - you are missing out on some delightful cinema.)
The “W” in Wall-E stands for “Waste”, which gives you an idea what the title character is - a trash compactor on wheels. Centuries before the narrative begins, Wall-E and his robot brethren were enlisted to dispose of epic mounds of garbage flooding the earth while humankind (aided and abetted by Buy N Large, a corporate/governmental entity that resembles Wal-Mart on steroids) took a vacation in space - and never came back. 700 years later, Wall-E (along with a cockroach sidekick) is the only thing moving on Earth and is still on the job, though he’s barely made a dent in all the junk.
We view what has become a bleak and silent Earth through the binocular-like eyes of Wall-E, whose reactions to his isolation, bumbling charm and endless persistence make him hugely endearing. Wall-E may be mechanical, but he grounds this movie in emotions that transform the aftermath of the earth’s seeming destruction from an incomprehensible nightmare into something we can fully imagine experiencing. Wall-E doesn’t just mindlessly package trash: seemingly in an effort to connect with something alive, the robot collects mementos from the Earth’s wreckage - everything from lawn gnomes to a videotape of “Hello Dolly” - that help inspire him to attempt epic feats.
Ultimately, Wall-E meets and immediately falls for the sleek flying robot Eve, who has come in search of signs of life on Earth. Wall-E and Eve’s relationship embodies the movie’s central theme: the transformative power of love. In other hands this romance might have seemed like an incongruous cliché, but writer/director Andrew Stanton makes the growth of Eve and Wall-E’s mutual caring and devotion seem genuine - and extrapolates from this relationship to suggest how our sense of connection to others can truly save the world.
No doubt this isn’t the most factually comprehensive ecological scenario, but there’s a lot to be said for how the filmmakers keep some details of the disaster abstract. What’s left unsaid about the movie’s world is still frightening when one has time to consider the ramifications. (For example, what happened to the people who couldn’t afford the space cruise?) A recent Los Angeles Times piece by Reed Johnson criticizes Wall-E for not providing a more harrowing, authentic account of what the ravaged environment would be like, but he misses the point that artists can make us feel and think far more evocatively by leaving some events to our imaginations instead of spelling them out.
At the same time, the movie doesn’t stint on portraying other details of this future world. The epic piles of trash, the freakish storms that plague the city Wall-E monitors, the diffused sunlight that makes Earth look like the recently received photos of Mars - these visual elements bring the world alive yet seem less incomprehensible than they would in a movie trying too hard to scare us.
And by allowing us to laugh, not just at some of Wall-E’s quirks and antics but at the insanity of a world inundated with garbage and surrounded by so many satellites that the Earth appears wrapped in barbed wire, the horrors of environmental disaster become more accessible - and perhaps more open for us to seek solutions.
So where is God in all this? The little plant Wall-E finds (which sets the rest of the plot in motion) is a sign of ultimate forgiveness - that no matter what we do to the Earth, creation keeps happening. One could argue that showing the planet continue to regenerate - no matter how we attempt to destroy it - will give anti-environmentalists false justification for demanding the continuation of the status quo (though numerous conservative critics have damned the film’s green sensibilities). But through its willingness to laugh at some of our flaws and to remind us that love is always there to help us not just do better but to perform miracles, Wall-E can inspire audiences to see that we all truly can make a difference - and that it’s not too late to make that difference.
Healing Waters: A Journey to the RiverJuly 13
2-5 PM
Please join us and our friends at the Sierra Club for a special afternoon of meditation, hiking, and enjoying the unique wild areas that surround us. We’ll explore the San Gabriel River and learn about the status of our wild mountains and watersheds. AND we’ll have something to eat — potluck abundance!
We’ll be meeting at El Encanto above Azusa, where we’ll carpool further into the mountains before beginning our hike. Please meet us there no later than 2 PM so we can get organized and begin our journey.
RSVPs are recommended so we’re sure that we don’t leave our carpool point without you, and so we can make sure to send you any changes in plan. Please email or call (213) 625-0149. We’re looking forward to a very special afternoon!
Directions to carpool point:
100 N. Old San Gabriel Canyon Road, Azusa, CA 91702
Directions
1. Take Interstate 210 to the City of Azusa.
2. Exit at Azusa Ave./CA-39.
3. Go north on N. Azusa Ave/ CA-39, 1.6 miles.
4. Stay in the two left lanes, bear slight left and continue north on CA-39, 1.9 miles.
5. Turn right onto Old San Gabriel Canyon Rd and continue a short distance to our office.
Note: It’s easy to miss this junction. Shortly before you get there, you’ll see a new housing development on your left, across the river. Then you’ll see an RMC El Encanto sign on your right. A short distance beyond the sign, turn right onto Old San Gabriel Canyon Rd. CA-39 continues past this junction, then over a bridge across the river. If you cross the bridge, you’ve passed the junction.
June 8-10
Torture Is A Moral Issue: Dr. George Hunsinger, Founder of the National Religious Coalition Against TortureWhat kind of people have we become? This question, asked by Dr. George Hunsinger, Presbyterian minister and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, led him to found the National Religious Coalition Against Torture. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is committed to ending US-sponsored torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Since its formation in January 2006, over 130 religious groups have joined NRCAT, including representatives from the Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh communities. Members include national denominations and faith groups, regional organizations and congregations.
PCU is proud to co-sponsor a series of visits by Dr. George Hunsinger throughout the Los Angeles area, with All Saints Church, First Congregational Church, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, the Islamic Shura Council, and the American Friends Service Committee. People of all faiths are invited. Please join us at one of these events and learn more about torture - and how people of faith can end it.
June 8: Pasadena
All Saints Church
132 N. Euclid Avenue, Pasadena
10:15 AM: Rector’s Forum
12:30-2:00 Lunch and discussion (space is limited; please RSVP to Norma Sigmund 626.583.2734 or )
June 9: Claremont
Claremont Presbyterian Church
1111 N. Mountain Ave., Claremont, CA 91711
10 a.m. to noon
For further information and reservations, contact Dr. Charles Bayer, or 909-626-4694.
June 9: Long Beach
First Congregational Church
Corner of 3rd and Cedar, Long Beach
7 PM
June 10: Los Angeles
American Friends Service Committee, 634 S. Spring St., 3rd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90014
6:30 PM
Potluck and discussion
Please RSVP to .
There are so many simple, basic human connections that all people experience, that we all have in common as living, breathing peoples and cultures:
Laughing over a funny joke or a goofy impersonation. Laughing from our heart and from our stomach.
Walking somewhere with someone else.
Playing games, whether soccer, tag, Uno, Clue, kickball…
Talking comfortably with someone else. Talking from the heart. Sharing.
Cooking and eating together. Bonding over our hunger, our culture, our likes, our dislikes, and how just plain good it is!
Singing! Either singing or listening to others sing. Playing guitar. Playing piano. Bringing out emotions that we sometimes forget are in us.
Dancing…moving our bodies to remind us that we are people, filled with warmth and energy, able and active.
Telling stories. We all have stories. We have all been through different struggles and different experience, but what is similar is that we have all had experiences and we can find the best in each other through those experiences.
Being in community. We find comfort in the energy of other people surrounding us. Whether it is our family or our close friends, our team or our travel buddies, we need one another, and that is something we celebrate.
And so it is with these commonalities, through our common humanity, by our understanding that we are all people, out of our knowledge that we all need these basic human gifts…that we must work for a better good for all. We cannot be satisfied with our own contentment and forget about others. We must not forget our common bond of humanity. We are in this world together and it is when we lose sight of our togetherness that we lose sight of why we are here, living, being. We lose sight of the real goodness that is human life. When we are satisfied we must ask ourselves if we’ve done all that we can, ALL that we can.
I was just in Sacramento this past week speaking with legislators about the proposed budget cuts for California and it was my challenge to remind them of their common humanity with low-income, working families. These budget cuts would be devastating to low-income families. We must speak up. These cuts would take from healthcare, welfare, childcare, aid to seniors and disabled, in-home supportive services, and education. These cuts would come at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society.
My friend Rochelle, an intern with Faith/Activism Collective, who was with me in Sacramento, told me a story about a simulation that a professor had her class do at AzusaPacificUniversity. She said that he had the most privileged in society sit in the front of the classroom, the next privileged behind them, the next behind them, and so on and so forth until the least privileged in society were in the very very back of the room. He pointed out to the class that those sitting in the back of the room could see everyone else in society from the least privileged to the most privileged. They have no choice; their whole lives they see everything that everyone else has (food, clothing, shelter, respect) that they don’t and may never will. But, those sitting in the front of the room don’t have to see any part of society except themselves. In order for the privileged to understand the experience of the less privileged they must choose to turn around; they must choose to care.
We must choose to care. Be strong, bold and courageous. We are in this together.
Erin Weller
Orange CountyChapter Coordinator
Progressive Christians Uniting
“Seek to understand the experience of others for only then might you respond.”
We’re learning more and more about the ways in which our eating habits impact the natural world and contribute to global warming — check out the LA Times this morning! — but the connections between food, spirituality, planet care, and economic justice go even farther. Join PCU and our partner organizations for a unique afternoon of interactive learning and action when we tie it all together.
April 26, 2:00-5:30
Resource tables and registration open at 1:30
Simple communal dinner at 5:00
North Oxnard Methodist Church
1801 Joliet Place, Oxnard, 93030
* The Spirituality of Food: Jennifer Snow, Progressive Christians Uniting
* Creating an Organic Garden: Debi Markley, Organic Gardening and Herb Society
* Permaculture: Loren Luyendyk, Santa Barbara Organics
* Earth Friendly Cuisine: Gerri French, R.D. (Registered Dietician)
* Farmworker Living Conditions: Alice Linsmeier, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice
* Farmworkers, Labor, and Pesticide Use: Dan Parziale, National Farm Worker Ministry
* Global Food Distribution and Shortages: Holly Hight, Bread for the World
RSVP requested for our food purchases; $7 donation requested. No one will be turned away! Contact Virginia Classick at or (818) 225-0410 with RSVP or questions!
I am sure that others besides me remember the extreme weirdness of a 1300-page USA Patriot Act that had already been drafted and thoroughly honed to gut the United States Constitution well BEFORE the attacks of September 11, 2001.
I remember this period all too well, even as I recall the rising gorge I experienced then in observing how ultra-reactionaries really do play for keeps.
OK, so the ultimate stakes may not be quite as huge. But just the same, my skin started to quiver and my gorge rose perceptibly yet again when the current Treasury secretary, Mr. Henry “Hank” Paulson of Goldman Sachs, rolled out his financial markets reform package over this past weekend.
And how very fascinating it has been to see how the corporate media, including allegedly liberal organs like The New York Times and NPR have been playing this.
They can’t help reporting that Paulson had wanted to put his reforms across earlier. They cannot help pointing out–however deferentially and delicately–that what Paulson really wants is regulatory agency consolidation without regulatory power: that, in actual fact, his scheme would considerably weaken the Securities and Exchange Commission’s existing powers.
Superficially, Paulson’s script is about the need to get a grip on the enormous unregulated capital flows currently controlled by the hedge funds and private equity firms that constitute the leading edge of what, back in the Age of Innocence, we used to call investment banking.
But on the absolutely essential regulatory point–that these high-stakes players no longer be allowed to do huge deals with none of their own money at risk, with only leveraged capital–Mr. Goldman Sachs takes a hands-off approach. Ditto for any regulatory demand that such firms and their accountants be able to report actual assets on actual balance sheets: the routine kind of reporting that you and I are routinely expected to provide as individual taxpayers and/or small business owners.
This conforms to The Hank’s stated belief that U.S. financial markets will lose out to foreign capital markets if we ask for more integrity and more accountability on the part of our financial firms. It hardly matters that this “competitive disadvantage” notion has no basis in reality. What matters is that this notion has been assiduously propagated over several years by the very same U.S. private equity firms whose captains pocket hundreds of millions in compensation each year–and who are still taxed at a mere 15 percent rate as a further reward for practicing unfettered greed with such panache.
And so, in a perverse plot twist that beggars the moral imagination, the precise moment when these big-money players have been caught with their pants down could well become their moment of anti-regulatory triumph.
That is, unless the Democratic leaders of the Democratic Congress speak up and speak out.
So far it’s not looking good. There are two key Democrats to watch: Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer. Both have already said that Paulson’s medicine is terribly weak, but neither has said that Paulson’s medicine is yet more poison.
From Ray McGovern, with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army intelligence officer before joining the CIA where he had a 27-year career as an analyst. He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Published today on www.consortiumnews.com.
After one spends 45 years in Washington, high farce does not normally throw one off balance. But I found the events of Thursday to be an acid test of my equilibrium.
I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:
“When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight. We’re all equally precious. … In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion. … When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man — and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father.”
Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday’s prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol “the interrogation program run by the CIA … a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,” without conceding that the program has involved torture.
But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney’s remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience that America is a “decent” country.
After all, on Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other “high-value” detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique had since been discontinued.
An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone – except the legal experts of the Bush administration.
On Wednesday, however, President Bush’s spokesman Tony Fratto revealed that the White House reserves the right to approve waterboarding again, “depending upon circumstances.”
Fratto matter-of-factly described the process still followed by the Bush administration to approve torture—er, I mean “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding:
“The process includes the director of the Central Intelligence Agency bringing the proposal to the attorney general, where the review would be conducted to determine if the plan would be legal and effective. At that point, the proposal would go to the president. The president would listen to the determination of his advisers and make a decision.” Read the rest of this entry »
In 1908 Social Gospel pioneer Walter Rauschenbusch rocked the nation with a powerful treatise he called “Christianity and the Social Crisis.” The crisis then was marked by falling wages and worsening conditions for working people, unrestrained greed at the top, child poverty, lack of access to health care, failing schools, and a bellicose U.S. foreign policy.
Serious Christians at the start of the 21st century confront many of these same social conditions-along with heightened concern about sustainability, persistent racism, AIDS, and the resurgent nuclear threat.
Now the great-grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch-Paul Raushenbush, associate dean for religious life at Princeton-has re-issued his ancestor’s original text along with brief new manifestos by such contemporary Christian luminaries as Cornel West, Phyllis Trible, Tony Campolo, Joan Chittister, Stanley Hauerwas, James Forbes, and Jim Wallis. Renowned philosopher Richard Rorty-another Walter Rauschenbusch descendant–contributes the final essay for the new book.
Rev. Paul Raushenbush speaks out of his own experience and passion for interfaith work, the spirituality of young adults, and popular culture. How can religious liberals reclaim their heritage of activism and advocacy without being overwhelmed by the consumer culture? How can young Christians be encouraged to question, and to live out their questions in their faith? And how can we overcome the misperceptions about the strength and monolothic nature of the religious right?
This January Progressive Christians Uniting presents Paul Raushenbush in a series of Southern California appearances. Admission to these events is FREE, though voluntary contributions will be solicited in some instances. Come join us for meaningful conversation about our 21st Century Crisis, and how Christians must respond.
Thursday, January 17, at 7 p.m.
First Christian Church of Orange
1130 East Walnut Avenue
Orange, CA 92867
Friday, January 18, at 7 p.m.
Redlands United Church of Christ
168 Bellevue Avenue
Redlands, CA 92373
Saturday, January 19, at 1 p.m.
St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
3646 Coldwater Canyon Avenue, Studio City, CA 91604
Lunch and conversation with clergy and church leaders. To RSVP for this event, please contact Virginia Classick at
Sunday, January 20, 10:00 a.m.
All Saints Church Pasadena
132 North Euclid Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91101
Published in the San Luis Obispo Tribune News, New Year’s Day 2008.
One hundred years ago—in 1908—Baptist minister and Social Gospel pioneer Walter Rauschenbusch rocked the conscience of the nation with a book called Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch was part of a larger movement within the church that took seriously the “thy will be done on earth” part of the Lord’s Prayer. For them being faithful to the gospel meant trying in serious ways to challenge gross economic inequality, abusive working conditions, the exploitation of women and children, and the militarism and imperialism that were then beginning to dominate U.S. relations with the rest of the world.
For the past thirty years or so, most Americans who think about the social voice of Christianity at all have assumed that the voice belongs to leaders from the Religious Right: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Kennedy, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, etc. Now the tide is shifting again, and a new balance is being struck in which the other strand of American Christianity—the one exemplified by Rauschenbusch but also by Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and many other justice heroes—is again being heard loud and clear. Read the rest of this entry »
Many of us started our day today hearing the president’s press conference natterings in the background as we tried to munch our breakfast cereal or make our way to work. These past two weeks we also watched Congressional Democrats cave in completely on war spending, renewable energy source requirements for utilities, massive public subsidies to agribusiness, continued favored tax treatment for hedge fund managers, and a range of other vital issues on which they were supposed to lead us in a different direction.
Yes, the news on any given day can make us weep, or make us tremble with outrage, or both.
Yet we Christians live in joy, not despair, and we seek to engage others on the basis of hope, not cynicism. The Advent season helps us understand how and why we can do this. It’s not that we aren’t paying attention to the mendacities and betrayals that characterize these times. It’s that we have ALSO learned to pay attention to something else: to the light that has come into the world, a light that no amount of mendacity and betrayal can extinguish.
Emanuel: God with us, God in us, God through us, God for us. God for this suffering world!
On every single day of the year, PCU seeks to add to the available light, hope, and joy symbolized by Advent. We work tirelessly for the world spoken of in Mary’s song: a world in which the despised poor are lifted up and the hungry are at last filled with good things.
Because we believe passionately in the work we are doing, we aren’t ashamed to to say that we must have your passionate support–your prayers, your time, AND your financial support–in order to keep doing it.
Please consider making a year-end tax-deductible gift to PCU today! You can easily make an online donation here. If you prefer to donate by mail, you can send your check or credit card information (name, address, credit card number, MasterCard or Visa, and expiration date) to
Progressive Christians Uniting
316 W. 2nd Street, Suite 1104
Los Angeles, CA 90012
